life rattle show no. 1356

Presented on saturday, October 17, 2015

hosted by Laurie Kallis

featuring

"The Naked Women of Panchgani"
"The Volume of the TV"
and
"We Can Do It Your Way"
by Carmen Trapez

tonight's Show

Life Rattle No. 1356 features three stories from new Life Rattle writer Carmen Trapez.

Carmen Trapez, a tri-cultural Afghani Indian Canadian, was born during Virgo season in sunny Doha, Qatar. She immigrated to Canada with her small, dysfunctional family—minus her father—when she was thirteen. Carmen spends most of her time celebrating life with her possessive and superstitious powerhouse of a mother and her two best friends. When she’s not out drinking white wine sangrias or getting tattoos of roses, she’s at home playing sudoku in bed or putting together video collages for her blog. Carmen Trapez currently works meticulously on her professional writing career, constantly hunts for beautiful places to photograph, and never stops planning her future on the black sand beaches of Hawaii.

Carmen Trapez writes with a distinct voice that brings a fresh prospective to her stories. Her clean prose lets the strength of her character shine. Without sentimentality she creates finely nuanced portrayals of situations from the darkest to the simply awkward.

"The Naked Women of Panchgani" takes the view point of a young girl witnessing extreme poverty outside of a hill station in India. Her naïve observations of the destitute women, some only girls, selling themselves along the roadside makes everything we see through her eyes that much more poignant.

"The Volume of the TV" feels like a nightmare. When you think things have hit bottom, Trapez rolls out an even more harrowing detail. Children are always vulnerable at the hands of the adults who raise them. When one parent is a terrifying, violent abuser, and the other’s complicity lies in their abnegation of the grim reality, where can a child turn?

"We Can Do It Your Way" brings us to a less dire situation. On the brink of graduation from high school, a young woman discovers that the heartbreak she anticipated is not exactly the one she foresaw.

Please Note: Tonight's stories contain language and intense situations that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.